SEAMUS Member News — Fall 2015
Elizabeth Anderson received a commission from l’Institut national de l’audivisuel / Groupe de recherches musicales (INA / GRM) in Paris. Her multichannel acousmatic work l’Heure Bleue: renaître du silence will be premiered at the MPAA Auditorium Saint-Germain in Paris on January 22, 2016.
Jon Appleton presented the keynote address at a symposium at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm on November 5-6 honoring Swedish composer Lars-Gunnar Bodin, on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Bodin is an honorary member of SEAMUS, and Appleton presented an official letter of congratulations from current SEAMUS President Scott Miller as part of his keynote.
Julius Bucsis’ composition Blue (fixed media) was selected for the 3 rd International Csound Conference held in St. Petersburg, Russia in October. The Message (fixed media) and Some Writings of Spring (fixed media) were selected for CICTeM held in Buenos Aries, Argentina in September. Convection (violin) was performed by Daniel Mihai at the Vox Novus Festival Romania held in Constanta, Romania in October. Quintessence’s Breath among the Branes (guitar and computer processing) was released on the Electro-Music 2015 Sampler CD in September.
James Caldwell (Western Illinois University) was commissioned by the Quincy Symphony Orchestra Association (Illinois) to write a new ten-minute piece for orchestra with electronic sound. Lazulian Circuits was premiered by the QSO October 11, 2015. James Caldwell continues to celebrate ElectroAcoustic Music Month in November (a project of SEAMUS that seems to be somewhat dormant) with his 14th annual ElectroAcoustic Music Macomb concert, November 18, 2015, at Western Illinois University.
The UNC Chapel Hill Wind Ensemble, conducted by Evan Feldman, will premiere Eli Fieldsteel’s three-movement composition, “Singularity” written for wind ensemble and live electronic sound. The premiere will take place on Monday, November 23, 2015, at 7:30pm in Memorial Hall, 140 E. Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill NC. Fieldsteel’s work was selected as the sole recipient of the 2014 James E. Croft Grant for Young and Emerging Wind Band Composers. Eli Fieldsteel received his doctorate from The University of Texas at Austin in 2015 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Music Theory/Composition at Ball State University, where he teaches acoustics, composition, and computer music.
In June, Ethan Hayden presented his suite of pieces for voice, electronics, and projections, “…ce dangereux supplément…” at the biannual E-Poetry festival and conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina (see photos here & here). In July, he toured the Midwest with the Null Point ensemble, and performed his own work alongside works by Dmitri Kourliandski, Colin Tucker, and Zane Merritt in eight Rust Belt cities. In August, his arrangement of Charles Ives’ “General William Booth Enters into Heaven” was performed by the Buffalo-based new music ensemble Wooden Cities. Hayden also performed “…ce dangereux supplément…” at ICMC 2015 in Denton, TX.
Charles Mason’s Flutter Arrhythmia was one of ten finalists in the Fresh Voices video competition this year. His composition Fast Break! for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Piano and Fixed media (on the Seamus label vol. 19 is being performed in October at Visiones Sonorus festival in Mexico by Onix Ensemble. His new work for Bassoon and Fixed Media,Swagger was performed in Miami, Tokyo, and at the Studio 300 conference. His composition for cello and interactive electronics Jason’s ArcoKnots was one of five winners of the FETA Cellotronics competition and won the audience favorite award in Miami.
Scott Miller spent a month in residence at the Montalvo Arts Center this September. While there, he experimented with and began developing an ecosystemic work for Kyma, asymmetrical multi-channel audio, and theatrical lighting, to be installed in and around the glass sculpture studio on the Montalvo grounds. While there, he also gave a presentation of his experiments at the Montalvo Open Access program, and performed with Pat O’Keefe (as Willful Devices) on the sfSoundSalonSeries at the Center for New Music. October sees the continuation of Scott’s new series with electroacoustic composer/performer Ted Moore, called Ars Electroacoustica. Held once a month at Honey, in NE Minneapolis, the series features a different guest soloist who performs electroacoustic impro sets with Scott and Ted. Accretion, a work commissioned by Tallinn-based Ensemble U:, premiers in November at St. Cloud State University and at the Third Practice Festival. The work is based on spectral analyses of frozen water falls and ice flows in Grand Marais and the Grand Portage Trail in Minnesota.
Robert Spalding Newcomb presented a solo concert of sitar, guitar, and laptop music on November 11th Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor, MI. The concert was also a CD release party for his new recording, “Confluence of Elders – New Sitar Music for the 21st Century.”
Charles Nichols will present his composition Il Prete Rosso, for amplified violin, motion sensor, and computer, with violinist Sarah Plum, September 30 at the International Computer Music Conference in Denton, TX, November 5 at the College Music Society National Conference in Indianapolis, IN, and November 14 at the Society of Composers, Inc. National Conference in Gainesville, FL, and his structured improvisation Community Trust, for laptop ensemble, with the Virginia Tech Linux Laptop Orchestra and director Ivica Ico Bukvic, October 3 at the Electroacoustic Barn Dance in Fredericksburg, VA and December 7 at the DISIS Concert in Blacksburg, VA. He’ll present his composition Playground, for computer music and video of animation, a collaboration with media artists Amber Bushnell and Charles Raffety, October 17 at the Taukay Edizioni Musicali Contemporanea Festival in Udine, Italy, and compositions This Edge, for computer music and video, a collaboration with video artist Joan Grossman, and Sound of Rivers: Stone Drum, for sonified data, computer music, and video of animation and dance, a collaboration with choreographer Nicole Bradley Browning, animator and video artist Amber Marjorie Bushnell, poet and narrator Mark Gibbons, and dancer Allison Herther, based on research by limnologist Mark Lorang, October 17 on the Foundation for Emerging Technologies and Arts 12 Nights Concert Series in Miami, FL.
In August 2015, Benjamin O’Brien completed his PhD in Music Composition at the University of Florida where he studied under Dr. Paul Koonce. His work along the eaves was recently performed at ICMC 2015 in Denton, Texas and EMUFest 2015 in Roma, Italy. Benjamin was named an International Audio Artist Finalist by the Radical dB Festival in Zaragoza, Spain, where he recently premiered a new work for electric guitar and interactive electronics. His chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality, which offers a critical ethnography of laptop orchestras and ensembles that specialize in virtual music performance, will be available in early 2016. He recently moved to Marseille, France and is assisting local researchers in vidéomusique and sound spatialization with gestural controllers.
Ryan Olivier premiered his latest intermedia work, Three Artistic Glimpses, with the Relâche Ensemble on October 18th at the Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia. The Relâche Ensemble, a mixed octet based in Philadelphia which specializes in new music, commissioned Ryan to write a new work for their first concert honoring the legacy of Dina Wind, a Philadelphia artist and philanthropist. Ryan is currently working on a new intermedia work as the 2015 Fall Composer in Residence for BEEP (Boyer Electronic Ensemble Project).
